Seven states have moved that a court extend a 2001 antitrust judgment against …

California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia have moved (PDF) to extend their antitrust judgment against Microsoft until November 12, 2012. This decree is a modification of last month's request to a judge that the judgment be extended by five years. The current antitrust decree is scheduled to expire in November of this year.

The seven states make multiple claims to justify their request to the judge. Firstly, they claim that there have been "continuing problems" with Microsoft's efforts to document its server communications protocols. The states cite a recent report by enterprise software firm IconNicholson that expresses concern that not all "necessary CPs had been disclosed." Because of the delay in receiving full documentation for the protocols, during which Microsoft "increased its share of the server market," the states believe that further extension of the judgment is warranted.

Secondly, the report laments the state of OEM web browser bundling, saying that "no major OEM currently distributes a browser other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE)." This is important due to the rise of new middleware platforms (such as Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's own Silverlight) that can create rich, OS-independent, web-based applications. Here the report gets slightly contradictory. It states that, on one hand, Web 2.0 middleware and applications may "pose a competitive threat to Microsoft's operating system monopoly." On the other hand, it warns that because these technologies "substantially depend upon the browser" and Microsoft still retains control over browser distribution by bundling IE, it is "critical" to continue the judgment until these technologies mature.

End of the Microsoft monopoly?

This last bit gets into the argument over Microsoft's current desktop monopoly and what, if anything, is to be done about it. It's pretty well acknowledged that while desktop applications are still superior in many ways, all the interesting development right now is going into web apps that are getting faster, better-looking, and more powerful. Even programmers like Joel Spolsky who were once dead-set against putting apps in a browser are now convinced that web apps are the future. Part of the reason for this dramatic turnaround has been the adoption of new programming methods such as AJAX, which both Google and Microsoft use to create web applications that don't have to refresh the entire page just to update a small part of it. Clearly, companies like Google have shown that you can be successful deploying applications that run only in a browser.

So if applications are all moving to the web, does that mean Microsoft's monopoly is doomed? Not really—one still needs an operating system, although Linux is starting to look more attractive for low-end computers like Asus' new Eee. But let's assume that web apps do significantly impact Microsoft's traditional application business. Why, then, would Microsoft be pushing Silverlight, a web application toolkit that runs on both IE and Firefox, and also runs on Mac OS X and Linux? The states' report seems to imply that Microsoft will try to find a way to tie Silverlight to IE in the future, and leverage the 80 percent market share of IE on the desktop to try and edge out competitors like Adobe AIR. In our view, it's more likely that Microsoft has learned to accept the reality of a web application future and simply wants to make sure that it is the driving force behind its development.